


The Spyder and Mr. Hyde

by Brosedshield



Series: MCU Character Studies [5]
Category: Age of Ultron - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Anger, Anger Management, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death, Monsters, POV Bruce Banner, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 08:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6072427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosedshield/pseuds/Brosedshield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce and Natasha are both monsters in their own way, in their own eyes. Maybe they can fit together somehow, if they could just get past this murder-bot and awkward flirting phase.</p>
<p>(A Bruce/Natasha flavored Character Study exploring their relationship as developed in Age of Ultron, and their personal views on what it means to be a monster)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Spyder and Mr. Hyde

**Author's Note:**

> SO, I've had the ideas of this fic is my head since I saw Age of Ultron. I find the possibilities of Bruce and Natasha's relationship fascinating but was...less than satisfied with how it was handled/developed/presented in the film. This is my emotional fix-it. Fic is still in progress. Each Chapter will be a snapshot, and all Chapters will likely take place during Age of Ultron, and tags will be developed as things progress. WE SHALL SEE. Un-beta'd.

The way Bruce Banner figures it, the Hulk probably saved Betty’s life. 

He doesn't mean when she ended up in the crossfire between the Other Guy and General Ross, and Bruce doesn't count it as saving just  _ her _ when the Abomination would have ripped all of Harlem limb from limb (though he is certainly grateful for the Other Guy’s defense of her in both those instances).

No, the Hulk saved Betty Ross from the Banner Curse. 

His father, Brian Banner, was a brilliant scientist and a chronic alcoholic. Bruce, even when he'd had little thought in his mind beyond pleasing or avoiding his father (and covering up the bruises when both were impossible) had long wondered whether Brian was a slave to the drink, or the whiskey (neat) was just the excuse he used to justify the monster. Dead sober, Brian Banner enjoyed belittling his colleagues and ruthlessly appropriating the discoveries of his inferiors for his own benefit. He was paranoid, jealous, and convinced that latent radioactivity from working on the Bomb had forever changed his makeup. He had been less afraid of the damage that might do to his son, than that they would give Bruce and intellectual advantage.

Sober, he was an unpleasant man. Drunk, he enjoyed breaking things. 

Brian Banner considered himself special both before and after, but he wasn't the first Banner to kill a woman in a drunken rage. Bruce can still remember the sound his mother’s skull made against the pavement, even through the deadening of the closed car door (she had been trying to run, with him, before the Banner Curse killed one of them. She only half succeeded).

The memory of that sound is part of what makes it so easy to turn green. He's carried that anger with him since that day and before: anger for the man who beat the shit out of him for being smarter; anger at his mother, dead protecting her child; angry at being so fucking angry all the time. Adolescence was rough on a brilliant kid with so much rage. 

Bruce had been a walking potential monster, the last in a long line of Banners, long before the Big Guy ever came out to play. 

The most dangerous thing, looking back, was that the days he was closest to killing someone he rarely knew it. In high school he had half-assembled multiple plans to destroy anyone who crossed him, ranging from bombs to poison, and all of them, given his intelligence and effectiveness, would have worked. Knowledge is dangerous, and must be tempered by wisdom and control, and Bruce has not always had either.

He has nightmares (now, when it doesn't do any good at all) what would have happened if he and Betty hadn't been torn apart. Would he, like his father, have used alcohol to dull the sharp edges of being the smartest man in the room? Would the whiskey have left too light a rein on his temper? Would Betty have been caught in that rage and swept away, like a woman drowned in the flash flood off a summer storm? A hurricane can wipe your life away, but any force can wipe lives away.

He shudders to think what kind of father he would have been. It's probably for the best that high intensity gamma radiation has ensured that the Banner line will end with him. 

Though he manages with Tony well enough, and sometimes that seems like shepherding and overly bright adolescent that can build an atomic bomb from scrap metal. Tony is fun, fearless, bright, and, God help them, Bruce sometimes has a better social sensitivity. He thinks that much of it comes from Tony being in the spotlight from such a young age. He’s learned to shine so bright, one way or another, that no one can bare to look at him too long. When they SCIENCE! together, succeed or fail, it’s all spectacular. And Bruce has to admit that it’s nice, spending time with Tony, to not really be the smartest man in the room.

Tony, for all he has a stunted sense of privacy or personal boundaries doesn’t surprise or betray. He paints his secrets gold and flies them in the sky, or buries them in his chest and assumes that no one else will ask. When he succeeds, he’s just as brilliant as he’ll tell the press he is, and when he fails, even the fuck ups are spectacular.

When it comes to the Hulk, Tony is practical, but fearless. He helped Bruce build Veronica to contain the Other Guy in an emergency, but Bruce cannot remember a single moment when Tony every pussyfooted around him, even when maybe a person with common sense should have run for the hills. 

Bruce seems to have friends, now, in the Avengers, and one way or another, they are mostly indestructible. Hulk loves Iron Man, and respects Cap (who can take one hell of a beating and walk it off), Barton’s just frankly hard to catch, and Thor can literally be knocked through a wall and get up with, maybe a split lip. It’s the first time in his life that Bruce has not had any reason to worry that he will hurt the people around him.

And then of course there is Natasha. A less observant man would look at her elegant curved frame, her short stature, and her gender and assume her to be the weakest member of the team. Bruce pities fools like that (even as he might enjoy watching her deal with them in a fight).

Maybe the Other Guy could lay the Black Widow out (if he could catch her) but Bruce is not even sure of that, for all that the Widow has a healthy respect for the sheer power and threat the Hulk represents. Bruce has seen her take a punch in an old interrogation tape, and it was the smoothest deflection of force he'd ever seen, and he lived on the other side of that for upwards of a decade. He has a hard time imagining anyone laying a hand on Natasha when she didn’t let them. He's almost certain that, if it happened, she made them regret it. 

They flirt at times, if that’s what you call it when quiet conversations have a little too much eyes contact and a little too much weight. He’s not sure, yet, what either of them could mean by it, but he knows he can’t hurt her, not as Banner.

Natasha is beautiful and smooth, and deadly as the spider she is named for, and she makes a part of Bruce ache (and not the part Tony would joke about though, yes, he is neither dead nor blind). Maybe it's the part of him that has always been afraid of what a relationship could mean for his partner. He doesn't want to hurt anyone, but some days that pain feels inevitable as the tide. He likes Natasha for her insight, her intelligence, her practicality and some part of him believes that, with her, maybe he wouldn't have to fear the Banner Curse.

**Author's Note:**

> Authorial Wibbling: I had the idea to have a GRAND PLOT, which reconciled all the irregular bits of Age of Ultron, and streamlined them into a gorgeous and consistent whole, with many Chapters all written out and perfected before posting even began...and then I watched Age of Ultron again. And I realized the challenge that would be.
> 
> So, I'm going to wing it, and hopefully you all will enjoy the ride. I would love to hear your thoughts (heh, might help me with further sections) and generally love to meet people. So comments are love, otherwise I am knownasbelen over on Tumblr and brosedshield an Livejournal. :)


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